Moments

Between the Roots has me thinking a lot about moments. On the soup run, I meet a lot of people. Some I see every week, some disappear for a while, and some I may only meet once. You get used to not always knowing what happens after a conversation ends. Sometimes all you get is a few minutes with someone before both of you keep moving. A while ago, I stopped and talked with a woman who was sitting on the sidewalk, behind a planter at a crosswalk, hidden from the view of those just passing by. She was crying, and I could tell she was having a hard time. We talked for a while, and before I left, we prayed together. A couple of days later, someone sent me a missing-person flyer. It was her. With the soup run, it isn't unusual for me to see someone one week and then not see them again for a while, but this time I knew she was missing. So instead of only going out for the regular soup run, I started going out more often. I drove the same route, talked with the people I knew and even the ones I didn't. Everyone was concerned, and everyone seemed to be watching. A few weeks later, I found her. We prayed together again, but this time the prayer wasn't what I expected. She wanted to pray for the people who had gone out looking for her. That moment stayed with me. There is another guy I started noticing in the park. At first that was all it was. I noticed him. Then I noticed him again. Eventually noticing became stopping, and stopping became talking. Over time, he trusted me enough to tell me more of his story. The story I could have made up about him from a distance wasn't his story at all. He was working. He was saving. He was trying to get enough together to afford housing. There wasn't one big dramatic moment where that happened. It grew out of a bunch of little ones. A hello. Stopping again. Another conversation. Being there often enough that eventually I wasn't just another person walking past. Then today, on my way home, I saw a guy sitting at a bus shelter. From a distance I thought he was someone I knew, so I headed toward him. As I got closer, I realized I was wrong. It wasn't him. I could have said, “Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” and kept going. It would have made perfect sense. I didn't know him. It was raining. I was cold, wet and tired, and my body was making a very convincing argument for going home. But my heart kept telling me to stay. So I stayed. We started talking about his situation. It was a story I have heard in different forms many times before. Things hadn't gone the way he expected, life had gotten complicated, and he was trying to make his way through it. I mostly listened. After a while, I was getting ready to leave when he asked if I collected things. This was unfortunate for my plans of leaving because I am a hoarder at heart. Free stuff just seems to appear around me. I currently have eight cinderblocks I found in an alley and still don't quite know what I am going to do with them, so apparently my standards for what might someday be useful are not especially demanding. I stayed a little longer. He showed me a stool cushion with a picture of a 1952 Rolls-Royce on it. It looked like something that might once have sat in somebody's auto shop. It had definitely seen better days, but to him it was priceless. Then came an hourglass pendant, which actually was pretty cool. After that he showed me a rock he had found. To me, it looked like a river stone. To him, it had value. Then there was a deck of handmade playing cards made from old holographic boxes that might have been a pencil case in another life, followed by three miniature ducks he had found in a dumpster. Three tiny ducks that stood no more than about half an inch tall. And I stayed. My body was starting to hurt. My hoodie was getting heavier and more uncomfortable from the rain, and more than once I was ready to leave. But he had one more thing to show me, and then one more. Somewhere between the Rolls-Royce cushion, the river stone and three tiny dumpster ducks, I started thinking about why I had stopped in the first place. I stopped because I thought I knew him. If I hadn't made that mistake, I probably would have kept going. That bothered me. Not because I had done something terrible, but because I realized how easily the whole moment could have never happened. I was willing to stop for someone I recognized, but once I realized he was a stranger, staying became a choice. If I had left, I never would have known about the things he treasured. I wouldn't have known about his handmade cards or his hourglass pendant. I certainly wouldn't have known that somewhere in this world there were three tiny dumpster ducks important enough for a grown man to carefully keep and proudly show somebody. None of those things changed his situation. But the moment changed mine. I think that is what I keep learning from these encounters. A moment doesn't have to look important while it is happening. Sometimes it is just a few minutes in a day when I wasn't really in a rush anyway. The woman I prayed with was simply someone I stopped for until a couple of days later, when her face appeared on a missing-person flyer. Park Guy started as someone I kept noticing until those little moments became conversations, and those conversations eventually became trust. Today started because I mistook a stranger for somebody I knew. None of those moments came with a sign telling me they mattered. In my experience, the small moments are often the ones that slow me down enough for something much larger to happen later. Maybe that is part of where faith lives. I don't think God needs every moment to become some huge miracle before He can work through it. Sometimes maybe He just asks me to notice. To stop. To listen. To pray. To stay another few minutes even when I am wet, sore and would rather go home. Jesus did that constantly. He was surrounded by crowds, yet He noticed individuals. He stopped for people others walked past. He allowed someone's need, someone's question or someone's story to interrupt where He appeared to be going. I am starting to understand that a little better. Sometimes I am the one who can help. Sometimes the person in front of me has something God intends for me to learn. Sometimes neither of us will ever know what that little moment meant to the other. I don't need to know. I just need to be present for it. Because I have learned that the moment I almost walk past today might become the person I am looking for tomorrow. The stranger I notice this week might trust me with his story months from now. And the man I almost left sitting in the rain might remind me that even something as small as a rock or three tiny ducks can tell me something about the person holding them. Maybe the moment itself isn't much. Maybe it is only a few minutes out of an ordinary day. But sometimes God uses those few minutes to slow me down enough that they become something much larger later. Between the Roots, I am learning not to rush past the moments. I don't always know where they are going. But I am learning to stay long enough to find out.